Independent's Day

America called for war materiel galore, and Hudson answered the call with pride

Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

Like most of its peer firms and competitors, The Hudson Motor Car Company would find itself shipping a lot of product destined for use in Europe once Congress declared war on Japan, and the Third Reich, in turn, declared war on the United States. What's a little bit unusual was the fact that, particularly in England, Hudson had been enjoying a solid reputation as a premium car for discriminating buyers long before the war drums beat. Not only that, several prestigious British specialty builders relied heavily on Hudson for powertrain and chassis components, publicly saluting its demonstrated engineering excellence and durability.
Factory-production Hudsons and Terraplanes, modified for British export by conversion to right-hand drive, were universally praised in respected English journals such as The Autocar and The Motor, noting their superior power and handling while lapping the storied high-banked oval track at Brooklands. The low-volume custom builder George Brough publicly declared his affinity for Hudson engines and transmissions while building his coachbuilt Brough Superiors, fitting their L-head, 212-cu.in. Hudson straight-six with a low-pressure Centric supercharger mounted ahead of the engine. Spikins, a Hudson agent in Twickenham, Middlesex, used a similarly supercharged Hudson six to power its cycle-fendered, two-seat Spikins Special. The famed British designer and engineer Reid A. Railton, who designed and built the Bluebird land-speed record car for Sir Malcolm Campbell, produced a series of Hudson- and Terraplane-powered saloons and dropheads through the 1930s and early 1940s at the former Invicta works near Cobham. With its enthusiastic customer base across the pond, it's easy to understand why Hudson was eager to embrace the war effort.
As war approached, Hudson was gradually emerging from its own Depression shock, which saw sales plummet by 50 percent between 1929's 71,000-plus units and 1930. It got worse: In 1932, just short of 8,000 Hudsons were built at the main Jefferson Avenue plant in Detroit. The following year, that total had slowed to a Karo-syrup drip of just 2,401 cars, before a turnaround of sorts began in 1935. Still, as Hudson-Essex-Terraplane Club librarian John O'Halloran explained, "By the time the war started, they were in the black, but still not doing very well. At the time Chrysler bought out Maxwell, Hudson was the number-three automaker. Ford, General Motors, Chrysler and Nash were all making money, but Hudson's net profit from about 1934 on was literally just pennies on the dollar."
When the auto industry began seriously planning conversion to war production in 1940, the president of Hudson was A.E. Barit, who was named to the position after founding president Roy D. Chapin Sr. died in 1936. In May 1941, the federal Office of Production Management, which had been planning for wartime conversion and administering the Lend-Lease program, summoned 56 top auto executives to a Washington, D.C., meeting to discuss the industry's immediate future. The OPM and industry leaders then agreed to a 20 percent cut in projected 1942 auto production across the board. It also became clear that the United States would be facing critical shortages of several vital materials. The most immediately obvious was rubber: Petroleum shipments to Japan had been embargoed, and the emperor's warlords would overrun the United States' principal sources of natural rubber, the Philippines and Malaysia. In July 1941, the planned civilian production cutback was increased to 50 percent. To soften that blow, former General Motors president William S. Knudsen, now a top federal director of war-production plans, told the executives that Washington planned to triple its defense contacts to more than $6 billion: An incredible total, given that the minimum wage in 1941 was 30 cents and that the typical home purchase cost less than $7,000.
During 1940 and 1941, Hudson had substantially revamped its product line, both technically and aesthetically. Fully independent front suspension was introduced in 1940, and in 1941, the full model lineup--Traveler, Six Deluxe, Super Six, Commodore Six, Commodore Eight and Commodore Custom Eight--had 3-inch lengthened wheelbases and all-new sheetmetal from the front fenders aft. The buying public responded enthusiastically, and sales rebounded to just fewer than 80,000 units, far outstripping even the banner year of 1929.
By October 1941, the automakers and OPM had agreed to suspend the use of nickel, chromium, copper and aluminum for decorative or other non-functional automotive uses. Around the same time, to cool demand for automobiles, the federal Office of Price Administration (given war powers to control prices of critical materials) imposed a 7-percent federal excise tax on new cars, an amount that, interestingly, was less than the taxation rate suggested by GM chairman Alfred P. Sloan and Federal Reserve Chairman Marriner S. Eccles.
Although Hudson would build just more than 40,000 civilian vehicles before production was halted in January 1942, only about 8 percent of them were delivered in so-called "blackout" trim, which meant that most of the former brightwork, including the hubcaps, were painted in a contrasting color to the car itself. The sole exception were the bumpers, which were still chromed for scratch and ding resistance.
By then, Hudson was already fully tooled for production of the Oerlikon automatic cannon. This deadly anti-aircraft weapon was built in a newly erected factory in Centerline, just outside Detroit. The factory was dedicated by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and had a celebrity visit from King Peter of Yugoslavia. The guns were built under a contract from the Navy, which intended them for shipboard anti-aircraft defenses. Chambered for 20mm shells, including armor-piercing rounds, the Oerlikon was a considerably upgraded version of the 20mm Becker cannon, first developed in Germany during World War I. Patents allowing the Becker's manufacture were first acquired after the war by the European conglomerate SEMAG, and later, by Swiss-based Oerlikon. Modified by Oerlikon for higher rates of fire, sales of the cannon boomed during the pre-war rearmament rush that began in the mid-1930s. Some Oerlikons were further modified and produced in France by Hispano-Suiza, and until the Allies began their own arms race, most Oerlikons were purchased by Germany and Japan.
Most Oerlikons were fed by ammunition drums that held up to 100 rounds. Once production was fully under way at Hudson, Navy ordnance specialists, who were overseeing work on the Oerlikon and its ammunition, noted that some early Oerlikon ammunition clips were made from zinc, which by then had also been added to the list of protected strategic metals. The problem was, most Navy gunnery crews simply tossed the clips over the side once they were empty. Hudson would be awarded the Army-Navy "E" award for excellence after it began remanufacturing the Oerlikon magazines from stamped sheetmetal instead of the zinc-aluminum alloy. These components could be cheaply banged out by the millions, using conventional punch presses. In doing so, Hudson estimated it saved the government at least three million pounds of aluminum. That, in turn, led to a contract to fabricate other types of ammunition boxes for the Allied armed forces.
Like most of Detroit's giants, and smaller outfits, Hudson's mix of war materiel was a combination of weaponry and motive power. One example was the DNX diesel, a 1,468-cu.in. torque factory built under license from the Hercules Engine Company, for which Hudson built several internal parts. Another specialized engine was the Hudson Invader, built under license from the Hall-Scott Motor Company of San Francisco. These huge OHC straight-sixes were fed gasoline through twin updraft Zenith carburetors, and used dual ignition systems to light off the fuel. Invaders were intended for marine use in landing craft, especially the ubiquitous Higgins boats of World War II, and as replacement engines for the Navy's fleet of PT boats. Each one of these monsters displaced 998 cubic inches, produced 265hp and 780-lbs.ft. of torque, weighed 700 pounds and were built with both right- and left-hand crankshaft rotation so they could be installed aboard vessels in pairs. Hall-Scott was founded in 1910 as a builder of gasoline-powered railcars, but also built engines for trucks, aircraft, heavy equipment and marine applications. After the war, Hall-Scott was probably best known for its six-cylinder, 935-cu.in. gasoline engine, which was popular with fire apparatus manufacturers including Crown, Seagrave and Van Pelt. The last Hall-Scott engines were assembled around 1960. Hudson also made a variety of tank parts under license from Kelsey-Hayes.
Hudson also saw its share of aircraft contracts, for both airframes and powertrain components. It precision-machined a variety of connecting rods, rocker arms and other internal engine components for the Wright Aeronautical Corporation, whose radial piston aero-engine line was topped by the supercharged 18-cylinder Wright Cyclone R-3350, designed to power the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, and whose output could reach up to 3,700hp with water injection.
A prolific variety of aircraft components, for a variety of manufacturers, emerged from Hudson's doors. For the B-29, Hudson produced subassemblies including fuselage sections that were then shipped on to Boeing. For Bell Aircraft, Hudson fabricated cabin and cockpit assemblies for its P-63 King Cobra fighter. The great Lockheed P-38 Lightning twin-boom, twin-engine fighter had its wings built on an assembly line at the Hudson Main plant on Jefferson Avenue. Another component was the aircraft drop tank, subcontracted from Gibson, the refrigerator manufacturer. Those, along with the P-63 cabin assemblies and anchors for submerged mines, were built at Hudson's downtown Gratiot plant in Detroit.
Perhaps the most noteworthy Hudson aircraft contract was issued by the Glenn L. Martin Company, which ordered fuselage sections and wingtips for its B-26 Marauder medium bomber, one of World War II's more fascinating warplanes. Designed for high-speed bomb runs over heavily defended targets, the twin-engine Marauder had a crew of five, a 3,000-pound internal bomb load, and the capability to carry another half-ton of ordnance attached to under-wing hard points. Twin 2,000hp Pratt & Whitney R-2800-43 Double Wasp radial engines kept it flying. One of the Hudson workers who riveted the parts together was Elsie Heron, a young immigrant from Jamaica who had six brothers serving in the British army. During the course of the Marauder program, Hudson maintained a perfect record in terms of delivering components on time. A total of 5,157 Marauders were built during the war, one of which was featured in a Hudson print advertisement headlined, "Lone Marauder Battles 30 Nazis!" That drew a letter to Hudson's executive suite from S.T. McGeever of Albany, New York, who said the aircraft depicted in the ad bore a strong resemblance, in terms of its markings, to one on which his son, James, served as a crew member. After checking with the Army, Hudson confirmed that it indeed was the very same Marauder.
B-26 production came to a halt in April 1943, at which point Hudson Main was converted, literally overnight, with new tooling for an immediate start of B-29 component assembly, running on a 24/7 work schedule because the Superfortress was desperately needed for the eventual assault on the Japanese home islands. Another Hudson aircraft project that was very much worthy of note was its deal to build wing assemblies for the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver, of which 7,000 were eventually built, virtually all of them assigned to Navy carrier squadrons. Today, it's widely agreed that the Helldiver dive bomber was responsible for the destruction of more Japanese targets than any other aircraft in the Pacific theater, including the B-29.
Hudson's ability to switch over tooling with amazing speed, as in the transition from B-26 to B-29 production, left it ideally positioned to rapidly resume production of civilian cars and trucks once the Japanese signed surrender papers aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. Hudson was barely beaten back into the marketplace by Ford and Willys-Overland, but did get its first civilian car in more than three years--a two-tone gray Commodore Six sedan, officially designated as a 1946 model--off the Jefferson line on August 30. Some of the guests present as Barit rolled the Commodore Six into a reception area were Orville Wright, who had been a close personal friend of Roy Chapin Sr. and had taken delivery of the very first Essex-Terraplane Six built, in 1932; Horatio Jackson Nelson, a Vermont physician who completed the first successful coast-to-coast drive aboard a Winton in 1903, which became the topic of Ken Burns' 2003 PBS documentary Horatio's Drive; and U.S. Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, who would later lead a campaign to prosecute Preston Tucker for fraud, allegedly at the behest of his political allies in the auto industry. Following the war, Hudson took in more than 1,000 veterans as employees, including more than 150 who had suffered disabling wounds in combat.
As with other automakers, World War II proved to be a huge financial windfall for Hudson. Starting in 1941, Hudson had completed nearly $400.5 million in defense contracts by war's end. Yet within less than a decade, the automaker would essentially cease to exist, as Hudson would merge with Nash-Kelvinator in 1954 to form American Motors. O'Halloran noted, correctly, that in June 1945, Hudson's 11-member board of directors--which included an unusually high percentage of nine company executives--passed on an offer by the Fisher brothers, of Fisher Body and Fleetwood fame, to buy 400,000 shares of unissued Hudson stock at its face value of $22.61 per share, versus the current market price of around $30 per share. Fantastically flush with cash from selling their holdings to GM, Fisher supporters at the 1945 annual shareholders meeting strongly pushed for the deal, saying the influx of Fisher money would help Hudson strengthen its dealer network, but Barit demurred. Despite the introduction of the stunning step-down Hudsons in 1948, and their subsequent success in stock car racing, losses at Hudson began to mount. Jack Miller, curator of the Automotive Heritage Museum in Ypsilanti, Michigan, located inside the former Miller Motors showroom, the very last Hudson dealership, which Miller's family operated, had his own opinion as to why Hudson wartime glory evaporated so quickly.
"That Fisher deal; Barit thought that Roy Chapin Jr. was the instigator behind it. At that time, Roy Jr. was working in Detroit as a mid-level executive in the Hudson sales division," Miller said. "I talked to Roy about it, and I have no reason to disbelieve him, but he said he had nothing to do with the Fishers, although the Chapin family was the single largest Hudson stockholder. Regardless, Barit banished him to Boston where he was an assistant zone sales manager, I believe. Chapin managed to come back to Detroit when the step-down first came out, after he introduced Barit to all the regional sales people around the country and got back into his good graces."
Asked whether the Fisher stock buy might have saved Hudson, Miller answered, "Possibly, but the really big thing as to why they ended up going out of business was this big overproduction battle between Ford and Chevy that started in about 1952. They started burying dealers in cars, and the dealers had to have all these big discounts to move them out. That really hurt the independents, but it also hurt the Big Three; Plymouth, De Soto and Mercury all lost sales that they didn't recover for years, and the rumor back then was that even Pontiac was about to be placed on the guillotine."

This article originally appeared in the April, 2006 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.